1976 Articles

Tumors and Embryogenesis: Teratomas and Differentiation . Proceedings of a symposium, Nutley, N.J., May 1975. Michael I. Sherman and Davor Solter, Eds. Academic Press, New York, 1975. xviii, 324 pp., illus. $16.50.

Pollack, Robert

Nothing matches the development of an embryo for complexity, beauty, and elegance. Each cell of a very early embryo is like a ball rolling down a mountainside, with time taking the place of gravity. The descendants of each cell end up at the base as one or another irreversibly differentiated part of the organism. A teratoma is a tumor made up of levitating cells, poised at the top of the mountain, sending progeny down without losing the ability to send off more: the totipotent cell forever. Thus the teratoma is not only a tumor, but also a marvelously manipulatable travesty of normal embryogenesis. As such, it has been discovered by many different sorts of developmental and molecular biologists in the last few years. There are not many groups in modern biology who can summarize their work in less than 300 pages, as the teratoma workers have done in this book. I suspect this was their last chance to do so.